


Tired

by RobinPlaysTrumpet15



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Depression, Gen, Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, References to Depression, really just a thing i wrote because stuff feels bad and hurts sometimes, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-26 14:42:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17747816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinPlaysTrumpet15/pseuds/RobinPlaysTrumpet15
Summary: Sora's tired. But everyone's tired, right? So really he should just try harder not to be tired.





	Tired

Sometimes… Sora got really tired of the word ‘tired’. Because he wasn’t tired, he was exhausted. Or… no, he wasn’t that either. But whatever it was, the easiest word was tired. Because sometimes there really just wasn’t a better word. Simple things would drain his energy that had no business doing so. Like… rowing to the island or… talking to Kairi and Riku. Or sometimes just getting out of bed made him want to lay back down and stare at the wall.

It took so much effort just to… do things. Regular things. Honestly, he didn’t know how everyone else did it.

If Riku and Kairi felt like this all the time, then they must be a lot stronger than Sora was. They never seemed to have any problem at all doing stuff, and they never napped during the day!

But Sora… Sora napped all the time. He couldn’t help it. If he didn’t, he thought he might just collapse. And then they’d be even madder at him.

They already got mad enough that he slept so much. And that he takes longer to do the things that he says he’s going to do. Like with the raft. They’d hardly started work on it, and already Sora was slowing down their progress because of how useless he seemed to be.

All he’d had to do was show up at the island at eight o’clock to help Riku start nailing the planks of wood together. That’s all. Except Sora had tossed and turned most of the night. He hadn’t felt tired until something like four o’clock when he’d eventually thrown all the pillows to the foot of his bed and laid flat on his stomach. When he woke up, it was almost ten in the morning and he was still exhausted. Plus, as he raced around his room to throw on clean clothes, he’d started crying. And by the time he was trying to stifle it in the bathroom, it had taken what little energy from him that he’d gotten.

But he washed his face, splashed himself with cold water to get the redness to go away, and then raced downstairs and out the door. His mother might have called after him about eating something, but he was already late enough. If he sprinted to the docks and paddled as fast as he possibly could, he’d be there by 10:30. Two and a half hours late.

If Riku slept that poorly too, Sora really didn’t know how he did it.

But even if he did, he must be really good at either hiding it or being better than Sora about it, because he never did the stuff Sora did. He didn’t take forever to do everything. He didn’t get average or below average grades in school. He was stronger than Sora. He was a better swordsman. Kairi clearly liked him better than Sora. Everyone liked Riku better than Sora. Even his own parents, he as sure.

Some days aren’t quite so bad as others are, and Sora’s thankful for those days. But he learned a long time ago that even on the good days, sometimes he could just… start feeling sad out of the blue. He could get up to go and race Riku or help Kairi find the right colored shell or wash the dishes for his mom or pick up his room, and suddenly some sharpened-dull heavy feeling settles right in the center of his lungs. It feels like the color blue. Not a happy blue like the sky or the ocean or Kairi’s eyes. A sad blue. It was dull and grayish and kinda dark. But still blue. And it feels like it just sucks the energy from your limbs until you just want to stop and stand or lay down and stay there for a long time…

Sora wished he could actually say those things. But he doubt they would make sense. And if everyone felt the way that he did, then there was no reason to talk about it. Because it’d just be another thing Sora was bad at. Dealing with his own problems. This was normal anyway, right? So why bother saying anything about it?

*

He’d fallen asleep again. Kairi would probably scold him when he saw her again after he finally just… gets up, but that was normal. It was shady right here and the water was cool where his bare feet dangled in it.

He didn’t know what time it was, but he was pretty sure it was still something like mid afternoon. Plenty of daylight to keep playing. Lots of time to keep smiling. No matter how much it started to hurt. It made him angry, sometimes. Smiling was supposed to be easy and natural. Someone had told him once that it takes more muscles to frown than to smile. But… Sora didn’t feel like frowning either. So if he just wanted to stay blank, it would take even less muscles, right? But no one liked it when Sora stayed blank. They asked if something was wrong.

But nothing was wrong.

He jerked suddenly at a hard footfall on the ground a few feet away. Dang… he’d started dozing again.

“Sora,” a voice said.

Sora opened his eyes. Riku. He looked mad.

“Hi,” he greeted. He didn’t want to smile. Heck, he didn’t even want his eyes open.

“Are you just going to lay there all day?” Riku asked with a frown and arms crossed over his chest. He was looking down at Sora like he’d personally offended him with his impromptu nap.

He wanted to shrug. He tried. A slight lift of one shoulder was the best he managed.

“I dunno. Maybe…”

The older boy made an annoyed little noise. “Well that’s stupid,” he growled on his breath.

But then Riku approached and sat down on the ground with him. So he probably wasn’t that mad after all.

They sat in silence for awhile, watching the water pour down into the little fountain like area. Sora could almost fall asleep again. Except-

“Sora?” Riku half said on a breath, softly like he might start a fight. “Why do you sleep so much?”

Sora heaved a deep breath, willing himself to stay awake. Riku had never asked him that before. And he’d certainly never talked to him in that tone. So this was probably important.

He opened his eyes again. When had they closed? Riku was looking down at him curiously.

“Well, you know,” Sora tried to explain, waving his hand around. Riku should know this, right? Sora was just bad at everything so he couldn’t handle being tired as well as everyone else. Riku already knew that. “I’m just tired, I guess.”

“Why are you tired, though?”

Sora’s eyebrows knitted together. “What do you mean?”

Riku shifted to face Sora and look at him better. “How come you’re so tired all the time?” he said slowly, as if Sora was the one who didn’t understand.

How could Riku-? Was Riku not tired? Did he not spend every waking moment fighting to keep moving and talking and breathing-

“I dunno… But… you know.” Sora kept waving his hand around. As if that would help.

Riku’s new glare sharpened. “No, I don’t know.”

Sora felt his face heat up. “I mean, it’s- geez… You know, everything’s all heavy all the time and it all takes a lot of effort to do and it just sort of… drains you so you’re tired all the time, right?”

Riku shook his head slowly, his glare turning into something concerned and confused.

Sora finally sat up, scooting away from his friend and pulling his feet out of the water. Okay… he’d made a mistake. If he put on his shoes and stood up… he could claim something like… “gotchya!” and run away to find Kairi and have a beach race. Yeah, he could do that. And then he could pretend this conversation had never happened.

With shoes in hand, he pushed himself to his feet and sent a blindingly aching smile down at Riku.

“Ha, got you!” he exclaimed. Then he turned and made a run for the sand, calling over his shoulder, “race ya!”

He thought Riku might have made some sound of protest. And then the he’d spent the rest of the day trying to get Sora to talk to him again.

Sora went home with pained cheeks and the heaviest blue feeling he’d ever held. Riku went home with suspicious body language and a searching gaze.

But the day hadn’t been a total bust. Sora’d learned something.

He’d learned that not only could he not deal with his… tired problems well enough. He’d learned that not everyone felt like this. So it wasn’t normal. And that made him wrong too. Even more broken.

He’d have to try even harder from now on to be better.

*

Sora hadn’t thought it’d been possible to feel even more tired. Playing on the island and building a raft and going about his day to day life at home was bad enough. But fighting Heartless? Saving worlds? Looking for his best friends? That was absolutely exhausting.

What else could he do? He was tired, he was weak, he was beaten and bruised and bloody and and and…

And Kairi’s heart was trapped in his.

He could free her. And after that… after that? He could… he could just…

Rest…

The keyblade hurt. Not just an aching sort of pain or the heavy blue weight. It stung and smarted and ripped and tore and-

And Sora felt lighter. Lighter than he’d felt in… a long time. Since he was small and playing with Riku and wondering about the girl with blue eyes and red hair who wasn’t from their world. He smiled.

Finally… he was tired but now he could just…

Sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. This was based off a random thought I'd had the other night that. I'd been thinking about how much Sora sleeps and then the thought spiraled into the theory that Sora could have been battling depression before the events of Kingdom Hearts I happen. That's just a thought I had. I wanted to do something with it, and I was feeling bad today, so this is what happened.
> 
> Anyway, let me know what you thought, and if you caught any grammar mistakes. Thanks!


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